It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (20 page)

Once in Hollywood, Anne was immediately processed through the production mill at Twentieth Century-Fox. The new contractee was ordered to take a less ethnic professional name and agreed to become Anne Bancroft. Her debut was in a melodrama, 1952’s
Don’t Bother to Knock
, but all the attention went to the picture’s leading lady, Marilyn Monroe. Through trial and error, in such lesser films as 1954’s
Gorilla at Large
and
The Raid
, Anne learned her craft.

At first, Anne was thrilled by the mere fact of being in the land of palm trees and swimming pools and being part of the seemingly glamorous film industry. “When I went to Hollywood under contract to Fox, I thought I had arrived; on a clear day you could’ve seen my swelled head from Pasadena!” Later, she recalled of her new hometown, “I thought it was the cat’s meow. Here I was, in the movies! Hey, I thought it was the best thing that could ever happen to a little girl from the Bronx. And it was a dream come true for me. What did I know? I wore spangles. And somebody did my hair every day, and put my makeup on. And brought me coffee, and Kleenex when I sneezed. What a life! And when you’re nineteen years old, that’s great.”

However, as Bancroft adjusted to the glitzy moviemaking lifestyle, it lost a bit of its sparkle. Meanwhile, she was growing increasingly unhappy at the studio, where she worked diligently in one (mediocre) picture after another but never seemed to get a key part that would truly launch her career.

Bored with the not-so-merry round of picturemaking, she found solace in the Tinseltown nightlife and became a frequent face at the Sunset Strip nightclubs. Then she met Martin A. May, who came from an oil-rich Texas family. He was a law student at the University of Southern California. The couple began dating and, eventually, they decided to wed. (In retrospect, Bancroft said she was very discouraged with her professional life at the time. She had decided that marriage was her only option and “just about anybody would have done.” The couple wed in a civil ceremony on July 1, 1953. However, the groom insisted they keep their marital status secret until he had the right opportunity to break the news to his mother back in Texas. Thus, for several months, they maintained separate residences, and Anne gained a reputation in the film colony for being a bit ditzy due to her vague answers about the state of her relationship with May.

May’s legal career did not materialize and he turned to a career in real estate development. By this point, the couple had realized they were ill-matched as a domestic team. (For one thing, Anne was amazed to discover that her husband slept with a loaded revolver under his pillow. It made her nervous, but she assumed all men had that strange habit.) To please Anne’s parents, the couple remarried in a Catholic ceremony back in New York. Eventually, they separated and, in February 1957, they divorced. Bancroft explained the breakup with: “Call it different temperaments. He’s blond and I’m brunette.… He’s from Texas and I’m from the Bronx. Texans will never understand Latins, and vice versa.”

Later, May said of his ex-wife, “Annie was intense about everything. She’d lie on the floor and watch television by the hour, or she’d fry an egg, standing there leaning over the skillet staring as if the fate of the city depended on that egg. She was either a hungry tiger or a lovable lap dog.” Another time May revealed of his displeasing marriage: “She worked from 4
A.M
. to 6
P.M
. She came home and couldn’t talk. Once she wouldn’t talk to me for three weeks. There was a lack of companionship with millions of people tracking into the house. She tried to combine two loves—one a marriage and the other a career. The career turned out to be the greater of the two.”

Anne’s film contract at Twentieth Century-Fox had expired in the mid-1950s. Thereafter, she kept busy both with freelance movie assignments (such as playing a mixed-race Native American in the 1956 Western
Walk the Proud Land
and the female love interest in the 1957 film noir entry
Nightfall
) and doing TV parts. One of these roles was on a segment of the esteemed
Playhouse
90 TV series. Later, Richard Basehart, her costar in that episode, auditioned for the male lead in an upcoming Broadway play,
Two for the Seesaw
. He suggested to the playwright (William Gibson) and the director (Arthur Penn) that they audition Bancroft to play opposite him. Anne met with the creative team, but no decision was made about hiring her. Not long after this, Basehart dropped out of the project, and Anne thought that would squash her chances of playing the juicy stage role.

By now Bancroft was more than fed up with West Coast life. She explained, “I was beginning to have a lot of lonely times out there when there was nothing to do, and I would have to look at myself—at the thoughts that came into my mind—and it was a very dangerous time. I was going steadily down-hill in terms of self-respect and dignity: I was completely demoralized by the time I left Hollywood.” Then came the turning point. “Someone must have hollered at me too loud because I just went home, packed my bag, and asked someone to phone my mother Millie to say I was returning to New York. That was the first time in my life I made a decision entirely on my own. And that was when I was ready to be an actress!”

Anne returned to New York. She enrolled in acting classes at Herbert Berghofs prestigious HB Studio, convinced she had to unlearn some of her film and TV technique in order to fulfill her dream of becoming an accomplished stage performer. Meanwhile, she continued to campaign hard for the coveted play assignment, which still had not been cast. However, all final decisions on the show were in abeyance until a suitable male lead (with box-office appeal) could be signed. Finally, veteran stage and film star Henry Fonda agreed to do the project. Thereafter, Bancroft was contracted for the cherished part of the kooky Gittel Mosca, life’s “born victim.” After many pre-Broadway tribulations, Two
for the Seesaw
opened at the Booth Theater on January 18, 1958. It proved to be an enormous hit and earned Anne her first Tony Award. According to Bancroft, “For the first time in my life I was a star, an honest-to-gosh star in an important production. There was a tremendous sense of achievement in me and I really felt like an actress.”

Anne cemented her status as the toast of Broadway by headlining in another new drama by William Gibson. She gave a searing performance as Annie Sullivan, the visually impaired teacher who taught the deaf and mute young Helen Keller (played by Patty Duke) to communicate with the world.
The Miracle Worker
bowed on October 19, 1959, at the Playhouse Theater (where almost a decade later Mel Brooks would film the musical play within the movie sequences for his movie
The Producers). The Miracle Worker
was a tremendous success and won several major awards, including another Tony for Bancroft.

•     •     •

By now Anne had the professional fame and success that had so eluded her during her Hollywood years and the making of 15 feature films. She was earning around $150,000 a year and had invested her money in real estate, a Texas oil well, and a California bank. (She spent $96,000 to purchase a brownstone apartment building at 260 West 11th Street “because I got tired of paying exorbitant New York rents.” There, she could live life on her own terms.)

Soon after Bancroft reestablished herself in New York City, she began regular visits to a psychiatrist. She hoped to learn how to better deal with her frustration over the seemingly pointless Los Angeles years and the unhappiness of her marriage, which had left her so distrustful of men. (She quipped, “The only men in my life from now on will be my father, my agent, my press agent, and my psychiatrists.”)

At this point, the very outspoken Anne made it quite clear to the men she dated, to her family, and to the media that she had no interest whatsoever in remarrying. “I had had one disastrous divorce which I knew from the wedding day was not going to work. So when I got divorced, I had everything from my panties to my umbrellas monogrammed ‘AB.’ That was it. I don’t even think of getting married,” Bancroft said. “I’ve got too many character quirks to eliminate before I can expect a man to marry me.” Summing up her situation, Anne assessed, “I was lonely, but I could pay that price too. I escaped into the work, but also I had a good time. I could have gone along that way.” (Despite her protestations of happiness at being a confirmed bachelorette, Bancroft kept asking herself why she couldn’t have “a mature relationship based on trust, respect, and recognition.”)

Anne continued her determined lifestyle for several months. One day, in a session with her therapist, she told him she had put a piece of a friend’s wedding cake under her pillow. He answered sarcastically, “At last you’re taking active steps.”

19
Back to Broadway and Beyond

never leave show business. It’s in everything I do. That’s because, to me, in a world where we know we’re all going to die, the show business thing—to sing and dance, laugh and shout—is the most courageous emotional banner a human being can wave. That’s why I love show business and performers so much.

—Mel Brooks, 1983

Mel Brooks was so excited at being in the presence of the sparkling Anne Bancroft on that momentous February day in 1961 that he was not about to let her out of his sight.

After Anne chatted briefly with Mel at the Ziegfeld Theater, she mentioned that she was off to meet with her talent agent at the William Morris Agency. She thought that would be a polite way to end the impromptu meeting. But Mel refused to be brushed off. He replied that, coincidentally, he was heading over to the same agency to see his representative there (although his agent was not based at that impressive firm). The two agreed to share a cab, and during the ride they exchanged further pleasantries. Once at their destination, Mel escorted Anne to the agency offices. Later, when she came back out to the reception area, lo and behold, there was the persistent Mel. They left the building together and continued their conversation. The next day Brooks brought Bancroft a copy of his recent
2000 Year Old Man
album. This prompted a conversation between them on TV comedy, and Bancroft mentioned that she had long been a fan of Sid Caesar’s.

In the coming days, through great ingenuity and determination, Mel learned where Anne would be dining or attending a function that particular evening. Then he would appear there and feign surprise at the twist of fate that had brought them together once again. On each such occasion he did his utmost to entertain the star and keep her attention. Finally, he summoned the courage to ask her out on a real date. Since his funds were low, he suggested they dine at a quaint little restaurant downtown and then see a movie at an art house theater, where the price of tickets was reasonable. As Anne continued to see Mel, she realized that his finances were meager. So she frequently suggested that he come by her place so that she could cook a traditional Italian meal. It soon became a habit for Mel to spend a great deal of his free time at Anne’s West 11th Street residence. Mel was ecstatic at his sudden good fortune.

•     •     •

Producer Edward Padula had endured over 80 backers’ auditions for possible investors to raise the $290,000 needed to finance
Bye Bye Birdie,
which opened on Broadway in April 1960. The play was a remarkable success, playing through to October 1961. During its lengthy run, Broadway/film director Joshua Logan saw a performance of the popular show. At intermission Logan encountered Padula in the lobby and told him how much he was enjoying the evening and hoped that they could work together one day. Padula used the occasion to mention a property he had long wanted to convert into a new musical for the American theater, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel
Pnin.
The plot concerned a Russian-born professor who comes to teach in the United States and must adapt to the strange culture of his new homeland. Padula’s representatives had approached Nabokov for the rights, but the author had refused all offers. Then the producer found Robert Lewis Taylor’s 1950 novel,
Professor Fodorski
, which dealt with much the same matter. The rights to that work were acquired rather easily. Thereafter, Padula assigned the
Bye Bye Birdie
songwriting team of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams to the new project. In turn, the duo suggested Mel Brooks as a good bet to adapt the Taylor book for the upcoming musical. Mel jumped at the offer without fully thinking through what would be required of him. Instead he focused on the more appealing aspects of the job. Not only would his fee help to tide him over during these tough financial times, but he remained determined to earn a solid Broadway credit. That, he reasoned, would prove to everyone that his last stage venture,
Shinbone Alley
, was not truly representative of his talents.

Logan became intrigued with the developing stage production and arranged for Padula and his creative team to convene at Joshua’s country home in Stamford, Connecticut. At the meeting, the group bandied about ideas for giving the satirical story line a proper structure to support the musical comedy. In the course of the day, Mel expressed his ideas, some of which seemed promising. When the get-together ended, it was agreed that Logan would seriously consider coming aboard the Broadway-bound venture. At the time, everyone believed that the elitist Joshua was the proper person to helm this production. After all, his Broadway credentials included such successful musicals as
Annie Get Your Gun
,
South Pacific
,
Wish You Were Here
, and
Fanny.
While Logan rushed off to Hollywood to make films and ponder his possible participation on the show, the others got down to creating the musical.

Unlike
New Faces of 1952
(for which Brooks had provided a humorous skit) and
Shinbone Alley
(for which Mel had only undertaken rewrites of Joe Darion’s book), this time Brooks was responsible for the
entire
libretto. Under the best of circumstances this was a challenging assignment. What made it more difficult for Brooks was that he was used to writing (or better yet, talking) in “committee” as he had done on both
Your Show of Shows
and
Caesar’s Hour.
There, each member of the writing squad spurred on the others, and, if a sketch proved too unwieldy, it could always be discarded. If weekly script deadlines seemed perilously close to being missed, there was always head writer Mel Tolkin to corral the comedy writers (including Brooks) back onto schedule. However, on this new stage venture, Mel was virtually on his own in structuring the libretto, and he had little background and too little discipline to handle such a demanding situation successfully. As he submitted drafts (which he either handwrote or dictated and had transcribed) and was told they required substantial revamping, he grew progressively less enthusiastic about the project, for which he was not the final arbiter.